How to Beat the Heat

Sunshine makes me happy.
And happy people climb totem poles.

These days, I’m so thankful to Facebook. Every morning, Facebook is there to tell me that “it’s going to be a hot day in N’Djamena today. The forecast shows a high of 44C.” What would I do without this advanced knowledge? It’s unlikely I would have even noticed the sweat dripping down my back between my shoulder blades. I might have thought there was some weird African bug crawling on me.

I’m ok with a bit of heat, as you may have noticed if you are a regular reader of this blog (HI MOM!). I was born in the desert and raised on the equator. I love the sun. And 44C is only 111F and I am doing ok. True, if my landlord had followed through with fixing my AC, as he had promised to do, I would be even better. It’s not so much that I like AC (I don’t really like it—it makes me cold), but if you have AC, you can keep a room cool with it, even when the power goes out (which happens a lot now that it’s hot and everyone is trying to use their AC to cool down their rooms). I don’t have this in my house, so I have a few other creative means of staying cool. And by staying cool, I mean that I am sweating, but at a rate that can still be replenished by drinking water.

Most of the day I’m out at work where we have the perfect AC in my office—a partially-functioning one. It gets the temperature down to about 32/90, which is ideal. So my ‘beat the heat’ options really only apply to the evening.

Brownies with crackers
in them are also a good snack.
Yeah, I ate them all myself with a
fork right out of the pan,
because it was dinnertime.

Note: I would like to mention a couple of options that have been suggested to me as ways to “beat the heat” that are not technically possible here. These include A) the cold shower and B) the consumption of ice cream. A) The cold shower is impossible because my faucets no longer provide me with cold water. Water from the faucets is always warm now, which I like because warm showers are cozy. B) The consumption of ice cream is ideal, but not when your power is unreliable. Case in point, the other day when I got home from work, what was my first clue that the power was off? My house smelled like melted butter. While this is not an unpleasant smell, it does make the inside of the fridge rather drippy. Hot melted ice cream is fine as a snack, but not as a way of keeping cool.

On continue…

Me and my new best friend
(we commemorated our love through selfies, like real friends do).
The water sprayer doesn't work anymore,
but my face is already wet (sweaty), so NBD.

In Chad, most people sleep outside during the hot season. This is a good idea. There is usually some kind of breeze and temperatures outside are cooler than inside. Unfortunately, I live on the second floor of an apartment building. I can’t drag my bed outside because there is no place to put it. Also, I don’t think it would be super-appropriate for me to sleep outside alone here (in my underwear-sleepwear of choice these days), even though my evil neighbor has moved out! (I like to think that I drove him to it by being extra-annoying, but it’s possible that he just moved out because he found a place he preferred to live.)

Since I can’t sleep outside, I really rely on my fans to keep the air moving in my house. When the electricity goes, I have a cute little battery-operated fan that was given to me in a very roundabout way (Minga gave it to Tara who told me to keep it because I was having electricity problems, and now she doesn’t want it back, which is good because I never planned to give it back anyway). This little blue thing is enough to keep one part of my body cool at a time—face or leg or back of the neck or one arm. I can balance it on a pillow next to me while I sleep, but I also have another sleep solution: the frozen water bottle. 

Pre-jungle Amanda,
of the Pil-Pil days.

I’ve started sleeping with a frozen water bottle. This is great because I have to hold something while I sleep—a habit developed from childhood when I slept with this ratty old pillow my mom made me that I called “Pil-Pil.” She made me throw it out when I went to college, and I feel a bit guilty over that still—too many readings of The Velveteen Rabbit will do that to you.  These days, I clutch that frozen water bottle near to my chest and let it melt all over me and the bed. This keeps me cool, and by the middle of the night, when it is all melted, I can drink it to start replenishing all the fluids I’ve lost by sweating, now that the frozen water is gone. It’s a very efficient system. (I recently had to explain that this is a frozen bottle of drinking water, not in fact, one of those rubber hot water bottles filled instead with ice. Apparently this makes the fact that I drink it less gross. But I work with two clean water organizations-Amanda doesn't waste water.)

But it is true that the heat is getting a lot of people down. I respect that, but still it’s such a great unifier. Everyone is in this together. Everyone is just trying to survive. We ask each other, “How are you doing with all this heat?” The preacher in church on Sunday brought it up to illustrate the importance of staying joyful in tough times. I laugh with the attendants checking my bag for bombs and dangerous weapons (like I keep those in such an obvious place) about how at least they get to work in air-conditioned hotel lobbies. It's so nice to have an automatic conversation starter and/or sermon topic. 

So no, the heat doesn’t get me down. I’m kind of thriving on it right now (though I have started waiting until the very last minute before I leave my house to put clothes on). My ‘beat the heat’ suggestions should be taken with a grain of salt, as I beat the heat when I was born. But put me in the cold weather and watch me melt into a puddle of tears (ironic since I should be freezing in the cold and not melting—so much for accurate water metaphors). I will put on all my clothes, curl up in a ball under all the blankets I stole from various airlines around the world, and look up ways to treat frost bite and hypothermia on my phone from my cave under the covers. And when you finally agree to turn the AC back up to 25C/77F, we can be friends again.

Jungle style--only for photos because again,
I LIKE the sun (and skin cancer probably someday).

A different desert than where I am now, but still fun.
I love when the air blows hot in your face like a hair-dryer.

PS: You’re welcome, Americans, for the Fahrenheit conversions.  God bless all of your hearts.

Herve's daughter appreciated the American flag I gave her.
Or Herve appreciated it anyway. He has a high level of American patriotism
that can put other bearers of the Blue Passport to shame.

That Chad is so hot right now (OMG)

When it rains in Chad, you take photos.
This is from last week's trip to Oum Hadjar.
If your car doesn't have a faux-fur dash cover,
you aren't cool.

It’s hot season in Chad. It is the season that is spoken of by natives and foreigners alike in gasped groans. Expats share tips for “making it through” the hot season, and natives constantly ask if you are going to be OK, not being used to the hot season as they are. Years before I ever came to Chad or ever thought about coming to Chad, I heard someone talk about coming home from work while he was living in Chad and wanting to be able to open his head like a Pez candy dispenser in order to re-hydrate himself more quickly and efficiently. I thought it was an evocative image.

I, as you know, like the heat. I genuinely prefer it to the cold. People often say cold is better because you can always put on more clothes, but I don’t mind walking around the house in my underwear. I do, however, hate having to wear socks. They pinch and rub my toes and make my feet feel claustrophobic. But if I don’t wear them in cold weather places, I can never warm up. I especially loathe sunny cold days. It feels like the sun is lying to me, and I don’t like to be lied to. If it looks warm outside, I want it to be.

Post dust-storm clean up

I wasn't the only one in the car taking pictures
Even Chadians marvel.

Here in Chad, there is no deceptive weather. You look outside and it could either be sunny and hot or dusty and hot. It was chilly and dusty back in January, but I still was ok without socks. But I will admit to you that it is hot these days. It is hotter than most other hot places. Outside the sun pounds heat into your houses, turning them into crackling fire pits, without the fun of an actual fire. And we aren’t exactly an air conditioner type of country here. I have fans in my house and fans in the office that supplement our AC, which doesn’t actually work (but we leave it on anyway for morale). Without these fans, I am a sweaty mess. I mean, it takes about 10 seconds away from the fans to start sweating. You feel it first trickling out of the pores under your hair before it slides down the back of your neck and soaks into the back of your shirt . You notice every time you stand up that your skirt is wet and sticking to your legs. Actually, that is true even when you have been sitting in front of a fan, because your butt is blocked from the air by the chair you’re sitting in.

We ate mangos in this garden while visiting project sites.
It's a hard life out here.

Hot season is not all bad. I mean, it is also mango season, which I’ve enjoyed much more now that I figured out I could tell people I prefer the hard mangos to the gushy ones. People are happy about this because they all prefer the gushy ones. Also, I spill things a lot but never worry about slipping on puddles because they dry up in seconds. My hair also dries quickly coming out of the shower (aka bucket bath), which is great because I hate putting up my hair when it’s wet. Someone once told me that if you braid your hair while it’s wet, it will mildew. That really sounds possible to me, so I like to let it dry before I lump it on top of my head in a ball. And speaking of showers (or bucket baths because there is not enough water pressure here to make the shower work), they are always warm. Water that sits in plastic buckets is heated to the temperature of the room, which is usually 90-100 degrees (I’m skipping Celsius right now because let’s be honest: Fahrenheit just sounds hotter). And who doesn’t love a warm shower? 

But without the fans, life is tough.

So imagine my deep distress this week when not only did I lose electricity (which had been amazingly and impressively constant over the weeks since I’ve been Chez Naomi), but I also lost solar power. This means that I no longer had fans or the means to charge my electronic devices—two of the things that are an important part of my good nature.

We slept together.
I only pushed him off the
bed one time.

The first night I made do with the little battery fans, like the ones that I used in Mundri. Fortunately, I’d bought some batteries in Kenya in anticipation of a trip to the field with a Danish man who was worried about temperatures rising above freezing in a desert climate. That trip didn’t happen but the batteries definitely saved lives. I slept at night clutching the fan in front of my face. I still woke up more times than usual, feeling extremely dehydrated on soaking wet sheets. Once I woke up when the cat yowled and I thought he was going to get annoying about going outside, but he just was upset about getting hit in the face by a pillow I threw off the bed in an effort to have less things touching me.

If you are reading this
from your iPhone,
then this photo is
actual size for this fan.

 Without electricity or solar, it is also a lot darker at night, which I do prefer because I sleep better without lights, but it also caused me to be completely disoriented one night when I heard a cat fight that I wanted to break up, fearing the involvement and/or near-death of Felix. Suddenly I found myself walking into a door that I didn’t know was there. I spun around in circles, running into things and trying to figure out which direction I was walking. I had a brief moment of wondering if I could ever make it back to bed or have to sleep on the floor with the cockroaches (though Felix had eaten one earlier that night to prove his merits to me—it is a good merit to eat the roaches). After some time, I found the shelf and realized I was holding the little hippo knick-knack that sits on the book stand in the living room, and then managed to turn myself back into the bedroom where I found the bed and my phone, charged by the beautiful and hardy battery that I’d dropped on the concrete floor earlier and put back together later in the office. (Thanks Cherry for the Christmas present, and Kandos for fixing it, even though I kept gasping and telling him not to break anything whenever he snapped something on the plastic casing.) I flipped the light on my phone and saw Felix limp his way back inside, tail all poofy and bits of white fur stuck to his neck. I did a quick check of the kitchen to make sure that no foreign cats were inside and went back to bed, clutching my fan.

Bedroom solar fan, which
I initially thought didn't work
very well, until I compared
it to the battery fan.

Finally, yesterday, after many attempts, the amazing Rich brought over a new battery and hooked it up. So I had solar power that worked, and this time, it worked all night. Not like the time he’d fixed it and it had worked until 2:23am and then I had to go back to clutching my battery fans. This time I had real lights so that I could cook in the kitchen without a headlamp and see all the places I’d missed trying to shave in the dark for Pool Day at the Hilton N’Djamena (yeah, we’re fancy). And solar-powered 12-volt fans are a step up from battery-fans. But you know what is even way better than 12-volt fans? Actual fans, powered by electricity.

BURN ALL THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Because The Children are smart. They will figure out a way to make more powerful solar-powered fans by the time we have used up all the oil.

In the meantime, I’m sitting on the couch and the beautiful fan is blowing in my face. I’m not sweating. I am thirsty, though. (It takes a long time to rehydrate.) After 5.5 days of fan-clutching and darkness, my power is finally back on. I no longer hate everybody I hated before. Now there are one or two people that I can forgive while basking in the cool fan air.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to thank my fans. None of this would have been possible without you. You really are the best fans in the world. Never forget that. You keep me going every day. Keep it real, fans. Peace and Love.

And to leave you with a sermon, since I skipped church yesterday: my life is fine. It is way easier than most people's. And Antani's electricity STILL isn't back on, but at least we have access to clean water here in N'Djamena, while these kids in Oum Hadjer go out to the river bed to dig holes for water for their families. And it's hot there too. And I bet they don't have fans at home that they can go sit in front of. Tell Neverthirst you want to support a biosand filter project here. If I ever finish the budget for that project, it is coming soon. 

In a few months this will be a river again.
Next year they will find and dig-out these holes again.